FREE, FREE, FREE, FREE, FREE

Now that we have your attention, let's explain just how to get these free gifts, courtesy of Lyft. It's all really simple, we know you love DMC coffee and so does Lyft, so we teamed up to make something great happen. All you need to do is follow the three steps below and BOOM! FREE COFFEE!

Unlock Your Bag of Beans

Get a free bag of Dark Matter Coee beans when new Lyft users take your first ride with Lyft, the app that gets you rides in minutes. Just download and go. All four of the DMC locations will have a specific code to use, so just hop into your favorite one and follow the steps below!

1. Download the Lyft app for Android or Iphone. Enter the store code in the ‘Payment’ section.2. Request a ride and get picked up in minutes.3. Head to the nearest DMC shop, with the code you receive via email, for your free bag.**excludes barrel aged or cask conditioned

Nothing lasts forever, and we all know our blends change, And it's hard to hold a candle to our Warm November Rain!

This great cold weather coffee has been a cult classic for Dark Matter Coffee for many years, it blends together washed Catuai, Caturra, and Catimor blend from Finca San Jeronimo in Guatemala. This coffee comes from Santa Isabel, a special lot on the San Jeronimo Miramar farm. It stands out as an exploration of how drying process, particularly time, can affect coffee. A quick drying process creates a more brittle cell structure, which allows for oxidation and prematurely ages the bean. By elongating the drying time, you can avoid shocking the bean and preserve the nuance and complexity of the coffee. This particular lot has been drawn between 25 and 30 days. Intended to help fight the lower temperatures of fall, this coffee will have you singing Sweet Child O'Mine all day with notes of bakers chocolate, macadamia nut and plum. Country: GuatemalaFarm: San Jeronimo MiramarCultivar: Catuai, Caturra, CatimorProcess: Washed, Slow DryNotes: Baker's Chocolate, Macadamia Nut, PlumNet Wt: 12 oz

DMC is proud to announce the opening of our new location, Meddle! We are super excited to have the world's first Psychedelegance coffee shop! The grand opening date will be Friday, October 21st at 6:00am!

Below is a brief story of DMC, Meddle's hours and location. Thank you all so much for being a part of this magical Family, we couldn't have done it without the support!!

Conceptually, Dark Matter resembles a rock 'n roll band, with each location representing "albums".Using this philosophy, Star Lounge Coffee Bar was our freshman album, a break through that continues to energize the Chicago coffee scene. We rapidly gained accolades for our community driven movement with quality as the core focus. Soon after came our roastery, "The Mothership - Intergalactic Headquarters" a hub for experimentation and continual education. An innovative and rule breaking sophomore record, structured around four different roasting machines to profile coffee in ways that had not been approached yet. The headquarters also added new staff in our cosmic army, increasing our fuel for the masses, energizing and creating a new portion of the material universe that is here to stay.

Having successfully conquered the "sophomore slump", we decided to take the time and create another experience outside of our Humboldt Park/Ukrainian Village comfort zone. We took our ideas to the long established neighborhood of Lakeview to open the infamous "Osmium Coffee Bar." (Video recap.) Osmium quickly grabbed the attention of the north side of the city with it's oozing chocolate walls, and thirdeyes watching over the chrome and blue soaked environment. This third location further identified each individual store with unique but extreme differences in design and neighborhood feel, avoiding any replication between locations.

Which brings us to Meddle Coffee Bar, our first downtown shop. After countless sessions with the beyond talented muralist, Jason Brammer, we coined our image for Meddle as "Psychedelegance". With purple swirling floors, white subway tile with black grout,datura trumpets ripping out of the bricks, a coffee jungle coming to life, and purple neon so alive it brings flashbacks to the forefront of your brain, Meddle brings our counter culture spirit to the West Loop neighborhood.

Calling all our Wu Family out!!! Ghostface Killah will be the featured guest speaker for Chicago Ideas Week on Thursday, October 20th at the MCA. THEN he will be performing at The Metro for the official after party. DMC is giving away the IRONMAN prize package for some lucky people out there. Here's what you get!

We will be giving away a one of these prize packs via our email blast, Facebook and Instagram. Each of the prizes packs will require different things to do to win. Stay tuned to Facebook and Instagram to find out the other contests for additional chances to win! Metro Tix Chicago Ideas Tix

Calling all of you Gilmore Girls fans out there, make sure to get to our Osmium location on Wednesday, October 5th as we transform into a mini-Luke's Diner for a day. What does this mean for you? It means a free cup of coffee!! That's right, Netflix is celebrating the first date that Gilmore Girls ran on air by giving away coffee. All you have to do is come to Osmium, er, we mean Luke's Diner starting at 7:00am to claim your free cup.

You may be asking yourself ,"Why would Dark Matter put up a picture of constellations in the Southern sky?" Well, with good reason friends! We have teamed up with Adler Planetarium for TWO Scopes In The City events at Star Lounge Coffee Bar!

Adler Planetarium’s 'Scopes In The City program brings free telescope observing to community gathering spaces throughout the Chicago area. On select dates throughout the year, Adler staff lead daytime and/or early evening sky observing programs, answer questions, and share stories. On September 8, look for Adler’s ‘Scopes in the City telescope at Star Lounge Coffee Bar! Weather permitting, you’ll be able to check out the Moon, Mars, and Saturn – all in one night!

You may want to download an app to get you primed for all that great star action. There are several available for both android and apple phones. Sky View (iPhone only) and Sky Safari (Android, iPhone) are two great ones.

Dark Matter Coffee & Estereo are teaming to celebrate the late summer nights, delicious Blu Breezy cocktails and hot vinyl from some of your favorite DJs.

Join us on Thursday, September 8th starting 7pm, with sets from Supreme Court, Ben Fasman and Twinpeaks DJs warming up the night. The headliner will be announced sometime on Thursday. Trust us this will NOT be one to miss!!

Special thanks and consideration Bangtel for providing hospitality! *This event happens rain or shine. Everyone who attends must be 21+, with a valid ID.

Friday, September 9, 2016 6:00 - 11:00pm

Dark Matter Coffee, Pipeworks and Sauce & Bread present a night of beer, music and mayhem! Who throws a better party than the fine folks at DMC? The answer is NO ONE!

We teamed up with some of best buddies to throw the ultimate SURPRISE party. A surprise? YES! We are only going to tell you the details of the party, but not the location of the party. Sounds confusing, but it's really simple. All you need to do it purchase the ticket, show up at The Mothership starting at 6:00pm and we will take care of getting you there. But what is this party all about? Glad you asked, details are below. One last thing though, these tickets WILL SELL OUT, so make sure that you are getting them before they are gone.

What do you get for your hard earned money?

- A pig roast from Sauce & Bread Kitchen with all the fixings

- Beers, Beers, and Beers from Pipeworks and Mikkeller. We are making sure that there are some really special treats included

- A limited coffee bomber from DMC

- A vinyl copy of the Brain Tentacles & Wild Jesus split EP

- A DMC snifter

- A Brain Tentacles & Wild Jesus show with some special guests!

That's a lot of cool shit, so make sure to grab those tickets before they are gone! Once you have bought your tickets, just show up by 6:00pm at The Mothership (738 N Western Ave) on Friday, September 9th. We will have buses that take everyone to the event. The same buses will also bring guests back to The Mothership once the party is over at 11:45pm. (Guests are not required to stay the entire time and can leave at their own discretion.)

*This event happens rain or shine. There will be no refunds for missed rides or if you are unable to attend. Please purchase accordingly. Everyone who attends must be 21+, with a valid ID. No refunds for anyone who isn't 21 and purchases a ticket.

Today is the day we can proudly report our coffee portfolio consists entirely (aside from decaf) of Central American coffees we have purchased through our friends. Our money is transferred directly form our bank account to their bank accounts - no middle men are taking a slice of the pie! Companies our size and larger rarely, if ever, can claim this.

The monsooned Malabar coffee has been a part of the DMC portfolio since the emergence of our roasting program. These beans behave uniquely in espresso and the monsooning process has yet to be imitated successfully anywhere else in the world. Though Malabar was fussy, giving this coffee the proper care insured a beautiful full bodied shot,

Out of necessity, we only purchased coffees through importers and every batch had to be sifted through by hand to remove stones, twigs, bones and other debris. Acid driven coffees were even more alien to consumers then, than they are today, and for that reason, Malabar thrived in our shop not only in espresso or blends, but also as a "single origin" offering. This coffee, it seems, is the last reaming relic of that time for us and our philosophy has evolved since then.

We were no longer depending on importers as we developed relationships with producers in El Salvador and later in Finca San Jeronimo. Debris became a far less common sight and product consistency was tighter than ever before. Now, we are lucky enough to have pristine, masterfully prepared coffees we can revolve around as a base coffee, alleviating our dependency on the Malabar's characteristics to produce a low acid, voluptuous, chocolaty espresso.

Our mixed lot is from Finca Santa Rosa, with processing done by Inaginsa from Honduras. (A gentleman and great friend of DMC, Willaim Dunaway and his family operate this company.) The key to these coffees as the base of Unicorn Blood is their cocoa nib character and complete lack of acidity. It pairs extremely well with the Catuai/Caturra (Guatemala) and together produces a subtle and sweet cherry nuance.

As an espresso, you will notice this cup to be far less jagged and rough around the edges. Unicorn Blood still holds up beautifully to milk, with Dutch cocoa, cherry and praline as dominant notes in the cup. This is an exciting time for DMC family and friends and we hope you enjoy your Unicorn Blood more than ever!

A little throwback to the first article featuring our barrel aging program. While we never claimed to invent the process, we have definitely perfected the art of barrel aging coffee. This is only possible because of the support that all of you have provided us over the past three years. Without it, we wouldn't be able to push forward, exploring and creating exciting coffees. THANK YOU!!

"This isn't innovative," insists Jesse Diaz, as he stands amidst coffee-filled bourbon barrels at Dark Matter Coffee's Ukrainian Village headquarters. "This is Old World." In an age when booze barrels are regularly repurposed to age vinegar, fish sauce, sugar, cocktails and tea, Diaz claims that the inspiration for his newest line of coffee isn't trend. It's the Dutch East India Company's historic, 17th-century method of shipping green (unroasted) coffee: in barrels, often those previously used for pickles or salt. Dark Matter's current batch of green beans is spending a week in Heaven Hill bourbon barrels. Once roasted and brewed, the time in oak manifests as mellowed acidity, heightened vanilla and caramel notes, and a burst of grape soda on the nose. The coffee is sold by the bag ($25 for 12 oz.) or brewed and bottled ($9 for 250 ml). Served over ice, the bourbon scent is especially apparent. The flavor of the bottle we brought home--from natural-processed Mexican beans, dried with the coffee cherry intact--was pure vanilla, caramel and banana, but the nose was all whiskey. More barrels are on the way: absinthe barrels from Letherbee (to be filled with Ethiopian beans), whiskey barrels from Koval, and a bourbon barrel that recently held Virtue cider. Now this is a morning cocktail we can get behind.